Yuga Labs: Smooth sailing for NFT collections, but ApeCoin may face heat
- Popular NFT pools of the ecosystem registered a jump in trading volume and sales.
- Native token ApeCoin found services in whales, but network traffic was reduced.
Yuga Labs’ blue-chip NFTs have seen solid growth over the past week in most of their key indicators.
According to data from OpenSea, the trading volume of the popular collection Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) increased by 150% in the last seven days, and the number of sales grew similarly.
Source: OpenSea
On the other hand, trading volume for Mutant Ape Yacht Club (MAYC) has almost doubled in the past week, with a significant increase in the floor price as well. The increase in the floor price indicated that MAYC remained high on the list of NFT traders and collectors.
Source: OpenSea
How much is 1,10,100 APE worth today?
Yuga Labs accused of IP theft
Surprisingly, the growth in the aforementioned areas came amid a raging controversy in which Yuga Labs allegedly used an unlicensed design for the logo of the Bored Ape Kennel Club (BAKC) NFT collection.
Yuga Labs’ co-founder responded to the allegations and stated that the BAKC logo will be changed. At the time of writing, the controversial wolf skull was dropped from the logo on OpenSea’s portal.
Saw the BAKC logo claims today. This was news to us and we are still investigating the situation. Have contacted the freelancer we hired for that design and Easy Drawing Guides. We are going to change the logo and update it on our website / ask marketplaces to change as…
— Garga.eth (Greg Solano) (@CryptoGarga) 18 February 2023
The ecosystem’s NFT token ApeCoin [APE] managed to shrug off the negativity from this episode as well as it became one of the most used smart contracts among the top Ethereum [ETH] whales, according to a tweet from WhaleStats.
JUST IN: $APE @apecoin one of the most used smart contracts among the top 500 #ETH whale in the last 24 hours🐳
We also have $NMR, $UNI, $SHIB, $MATIC & $LDO on the list 👀
Whale Leaderboard: https://t.co/tgYTpOm5ws#MONKEY #whalestats #babywhale #BBW pic.twitter.com/U3QhL8SJQD
— WhaleStats (crypto whale tracking) (@WhaleStats) 19 February 2023
Token unlocks can derail ApeCoin
Despite interest from whales, APE’s offerings on exchanges increased, per data from Santiment. An increase in this metric acted as a bearish signal for the token’s price.
The data on the chain also did not evoke much enthusiasm. The daily active addresses fell sharply in the last 10 days. The token also failed to attract new users as suggested by the declining network growth graph.
Source: Sentiment
A combination of these factors could have dampened investor sentiment, which is reflected in the falling weighted sentiment for the coin. But what could be behind this sub-par performance?
Read ApeCoins [APE] Price prediction 2023-2024
Recently, Apecoin released some coins in the market as part of its token unlock plan.
The increase in circulating supply caused the price to fall by as much as 8%.
With another unlock due in a month, holders were nervous about a further drop in the coin’s value.
At the time of writing, APE traded hands at $5.71, up 1.71% from the previous day, according to CoinMarketCap.
